Finian McLonergan, the crafty Irishman in “Finian’s Rainbow” with a plan to grow money from a magic crock of gold, almost seems an inspirational figure today, suspicious as he is of the money men who would abscond with his wealth and spirit it away to do with it what they will.

When the bureaucrats from the city come demanding payment for all the things that Finian and his friends in the fictional Southern state of Missitucky have bought on credit, he gives as good as he gets.

“Now, suppose I do dig up me gold and give it to you?” he asks. “What will you do with it?”

“Send it to our bank in Chicago,” one answers.

“And what will they do with it?” Finian parries.

“Transfer it to a bank on Wall Street!”

“And what will they do with it?” Finian continues.

“Ship it to the Federal Reserve in Washington!”

Mighty waves of laughter greeted this exchange on Thursday night at the ebullient City Center Encores! revival of this musical from 1947. Even in the immediate postwar years, it seems, the path traveled by Americans’ hard-earned cash was becoming suspiciously complicated. Better to keep that crock buried, Finian, even if your expectations that it will magically multiply never come to pass. At least it will never be transformed into a credit-default swap.

Pixie dust must have been mixed into the complicated recipe for this musical about an Irish immigrant and his comely daughter, who spread love, prosperity and racial understanding throughout a fertile valley in the American South. How else to explain the success of its whimsical blend of social satire and romantic fantasy? The cast of characters itself is a head-scratcher, including as it does a love-besotted leprechaun, a racist white senator who turns black and starts singing gospel, and a country girl who doesn’t speak her dialogue but dances it.

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Kate Baldwin, center, as Sharon McLonergan.Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

All this mad invention, bathed in a radiant score by Burton Lane (music) and E. Y. Harburg (lyrics), combined to weave a spell of happy enchantment when the musical opened, to play for an impressive 725 performances. The show’s improbable allure is recaptured with disarming sprightliness in this polished staging, directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle and featuring the ever-delightful Jim Norton (a Tony winner for “The Seafarer”), perfectly cast as the enterprising Finian; Kate Baldwin as his beloved daughter, Sharon; and Cheyenne Jackson (“Xanadu”) as Woody, the local boy she falls in love with under the spell of “Old Devil Moon.”

That subtle, jazz-inflected love song is among the best-known numbers from the show. It is sung here with supple sensitivity by Mr. Jackson and Ms. Baldwin, announcing, avowing and affirming their love in the course of a few verses of music. This was not so unusual in classic musicals from the period, strange though it seems today, when arranging a first date can involve months of electronic communication.

In any case, so much is going on in tobacco-rich Rainbow Valley that there is hardly time for elaborate courtship. The musical’s book, by Harburg and Fred Saidy, goes jigging off in so many different directions that the plot seems to be invented on the spot by the characters themselves. While Finian is manipulating Sharon into the permanent embrace of Woody, he is also fending off the pesky inquiries of the leprechaun Og (Jeremy Bobb), who has followed him to America to retrieve the crock of gold that Finian “borrowed” from his home in Ireland.

Og, played with spirited wit by Mr. Bobb, has his own troubles. Inch by inch he’s being transformed from a leprechaun into a human, and the tingly sensation he feels every time one of the local lasses comes near has him both excited and dismayed. (The Thom Browne-ish ensemble and green Converse high-tops, courtesy of the costume consultant Toni-Leslie James, are a cute touch.)

Mr. Bobb and Ms. Baldwin share their delight in the first ticklings of love in the prancing duet “Something Sort of Grandish,” just one of several songs in which you hear Harburg’s penchant for merry wordplay at its giddy best. It dazzles even more brightly in Og’s second cockeyed love song, this time to the mute beauty, Susan (Alina Faye), in the twisty “When I’m Not Near the Girl I Love.”

The comic subplot involving the scheme by the rapacious, racist Senator Rawkins (Philip Bosco) to acquire land in the valley (and Finian’s buried gold) consumes a fair amount of stage time too. Although the racial politics of the show, which humorously bring home the point that no man should be judged by his skin color, were admirably progressive for the time, they seem pretty innocuous today. (Ruben Santiago-Hudson profitably takes over for Mr. Bosco when Rawkins gets his racial makeover.)

But most everything else proves surprisingly ageless, even timely, particularly those jokes about the American passion for acquisition. The celebratory number that closes the first act, “That Great ‘Come-and-Get-It’ Day,” is a gospel hymn to the glory of purchasing on credit.

As the years pass, the Encores! productions move closer to becoming fully staged performances, often with a resulting improvement in the richness of characterizations. Almost none of the main actors consulted their scripts for more than a few minutes. (David Ives’s concert adaptation conflates different versions of the libretto to fine effect, but I prefer the less trite final line of the original.)

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Jim Norton, as a father looking for riches, and Kate Baldwin, as a daughter looking for love.Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Ms. Baldwin feels like a discovery as Sharon, although she has a modest list of Broadway credits. She performs her expansive vocal duties beautifully (including the famous wistful ballad “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?”), her rich, pure soprano riding the crests of the melodies with ease.

Mr. Jackson turns in a performance of easygoing, unaffected charm, even if some of his songs do not sit comfortably in his vocal range.

Terri White as a sharecropper brings great sly humor and a lustrously dark tone to “Necessity,” a comic lament for life’s drudgery.

And Ms. Faye’s lush, buoyant interpretation of Mr. Carlyle’s balletic choreography is among the best dance performances in any Encores! production I’ve seen.

While Mr. Norton takes no great part in transmitting the glory of the score, vibrantly played by the Encores! orchestra under the musical director, Rob Berman, he holds the whole odd enterprise together with the graceful magic of his performance. Although he is playing a simple comic stereotype  the Irish loafer with a gift for trickery and a weakness for whiskey  Mr. Norton is such a fine actor that Finian never comes across as a twinkly, synthetic cartoon.

In the musical’s final moments Finian leaves his daughter and his now dilapidated dream behind to seek another rainbow’s end. It’s a moment of natural sentimentality, but as performed by Mr. Norton, whose bright blue eyes are suddenly clouded with real grief and fear, it has a human purity that ends the show on a becoming note of melancholy.